DENVER – This year, Environment America’s work played an important role in winning victories for the environment on the national and state levels and in the courts.
“Thanks to the work of our advocates, members and supporters this year, more Americans will experience less air and water pollution, and reap the benefits of clean energy,” said Environment America’s Executive Director Lisa Frank. “2025 will present opportunities as well as challenges. We’ll work to unite people across divides to support clean air, clean water and nature in order to protect ‘America the beautiful’ for future generations.”
“Most Americans are with us in wanting cleaner air and water, protection for natural spaces and more renewable energy,” added Environment America’s President Wendy Wendlandt. “If we do the work of patiently organizing, listening and finding common ground, we can make progress toward a cleaner, greener and healthier America.”
Environment America and its state groups celebrated the following highlights and milestones in 2024:
Renewables on the rise in every state
When it comes to renewable energy, both blue and red states are going green. The latest results posted on Environment America’s 2024 Renewables on the Rise online dashboard show Texas, California, Iowa, Oklahoma and Kansas as the top five states for total renewable energy generation. Meanwhile, Alabama, Florida, Georgia and other Southeast states saw a 33-fold increase in solar from 2014 to 2023. Clean energy continues to exceed even the sunniest expectations and as of this year, 13 states are committed to powering themselves entirely with clean, green, renewable energy.
Through our “More rooftop solar, less red tape” campaign, we educated lawmakers, local authorities and the public about the need to make it easier, quicker and cheaper to install rooftop solar panels on homes and businesses. We worked with other organizations to host a webinar for state and local legislators to learn more about solar permitting.
We also helped pass laws in Maryland and Massachusetts that will boost the growth of solar in those states.
In addition, the Biden administration approved the nation’s 10th offshore wind farm, located off the Maryland coast. That action marked the halfway point for reaching the president’s goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030. We organized a webinar with experts to educate the public and policy makers about the incredible potential benefits of offshore wind for America.
Protecting our nation’s natural treasures
After persistent campaigning over many years by Environment America, tribes and environmental allies, the Biden administration took action to protect some of America’s areas of outstanding natural beauty.
The president and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland finalized a rule to protect 13 million acres of the Western Arctic from oil and gas drilling. These lands are filled with lakes, wetlands, rivers and bays and home to caribou, polar bears, seals and beluga whales. They are also a destination for millions of migratory birds in the summer.
President Biden also expanded two national monuments in California, adding thousands of acres of land to the Berryessa Snow National Monument and San Gabriel Mountains National Monument. This followed legislative action by our allies in Congress and public campaigning by Environment California and our coalition partners. We also joined 71 organizations to call on the Biden administration to designate the Chuckwalla National Monument in the Sonoran desert near Joshua Tree National Park.
Protecting open space wasn’t just a priority on federal lands. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) acquired 600 acres of land adjacent to Enchanted Rock State Natural Area. Thanks to a voter approved ballot measure in Texas in 2023, the state plans to invest $1 billion in their state park system in the coming years.
After a long fight by the Northern Chumash Tribal Council, we also celebrated the designation of the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, which will permanently protect one of the final stretches of California’s coastline from offshore drilling. The sanctuary waters are home to California’s southern sea otters, whales and seabirds.
Oregon, Wisconsin and North Carolina are among the states where America’s oldest forests have been targeted for logging. In anticipation of the United States Forest Service (USFS) issuing new rules to protect our oldest trees, we helped mobilize the public to submit more than 1 million comments in support of robust protections for America’s remaining old-growth trees.
Our national network won several state-by-state restrictions on bee-killing pesticides known as neonicotinoids, or neonics. New York and Vermont became the first states to limit the use of neonic-coated seeds. In California, seeds coated in neonics will require labeling under a bill signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom. A new Environment Colorado-backed law took effect prohibiting neonics from retail shelves. Washington became the 12th state to pass neonic restrictions.
Breathing easier: clean air policy victories
On the federal level, after years of campaigning by our advocates, supporters and others, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued new rules limiting soot and other hazardous pollution from power plants which are expected to save thousands of lives each year. The Biden administration also issued rules that will reduce planet-warming carbon emissions and air pollution, such as making water heaters more energy efficient, cutting vehicle tailpipe emissions and introducing a fee for methane emissions.
The EPA also announced $1 billion of funding for electric school buses that will give our kids a cleaner, healthier journey each school day. Our State of Electric School Buses report showed how well each state is doing to transition its school bus fleet from dirty gas-powered to clean electric models. We found that California, New York and Illinois are making the most progress. Forty-eight states had electric school buses delivered or in operation, with more on the way. Environment Florida advocate Mia McCormick joined school leaders in rural Dixie County at their electric school bus ribbon cutting.
To create much-desired cleaner air and quieter neighborhoods, Baltimore passed a bill to phase-out gas-powered leaf blowers by 2027. That’s the latest of more than 200 laws and programs passed by cities, states, utilities and others to accelerate the shift toward electric lawn care equipment. Our interactive online map showed the progress taking place across the country on lawn care electrification.
In addition, our state groups PennEnvironment and Environment Texas, working with our legal team at the National Environmental Law Center (NELC), won significant victories in the courts.
PennEnvironment settled a lawsuit with U.S. Steel, addressing thousands of the company’s Clean Air Act violations since 2018. U.S. Steel agreed to a $42 million settlement, including a $5 million penalty — the largest ever in a Clean Air Act citizen enforcement suit in Pennsylvania, and one of the three largest ever nationally. Most of the money will fund public health projects and the company will also be required to upgrade its facilities and shut down one of the dirtiest parts of its facilities to reduce pollution.
A federal court ruled against ExxonMobil and affirmed a 2021 ruling that found the company committed more than 16,000 violations of the federal Clean Air Act that harmed the health of people who live near the company’s sprawling Baytown refinery and chemical plant complex.
Over the coming years, these actions will help limit global-warming air pollution and should save thousands of lives from the resulting health impacts.
Clean water victories and holding polluters to account
The EPA took steps to tackle the threat of toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals. PFAS are known as “forever chemicals” because of how long it takes for them to decompose. The EPA established the first-ever national limits on PFAS in drinking water and listed two PFAS chemicals under the “polluter pays” Superfund cleanup law. The agency also released $1 billion in funding to further address PFAS contamination of drinking water, including testing and treatment of private wells, which are common in rural areas.
The EPA took steps to build on its historic 2023 rule to replace lead drinking water pipes across the nation, which we won through years of campaigning by our advocates, allies and community groups. This year, the agency finalized a 10-year national deadline for most utilities to replace their dangerous lead pipes and released $26 million to help schools get the lead out of our kids’ drinking water.
Working with the National Environmental Law Center, Environment California alleged the Port of Los Angeles violated the federal Clean Water Act with over 2,000 illegal discharges of pollution over the last five years alone. And Environment Ohio filed suit against Campbell Soup for thousands of alleged violations of the Clean Water Act at its canning factory on the banks of the Maumee River in northwestern Ohio.
Beyond plastic
Plastic waste takes hundreds of years to decompose, polluting our environment and harming wildlife. After we and our coalition partners delivered 138,000 petitions to Amazon urging the company to cut wasteful single-use plastic, it announced plans to phase out its plastic air pillows in North America by the end of 2024.
Finally, Environment California helped to pass a state bill banning all plastic bags at grocery stores. The bill closed a loophole that allowed stores to get around the first California plastic bag ban, passed in 2014, by offering thicker plastic bags.
